BAGHDAD, July 27: The fate of the bodies of Saddam Hussein’s slain sons will be decided in the next 24 hours, a senior coalition official said on Sunday.

The official said they had consulted the country’s US-sponsored 25-member Governing Council as well as religious figures.

“We will be announcing the final steps in the next 24 hours,” the official said.

Uday and Qusay were killed in a four-hour showdown with US troops last Tuesday in the northern city of Mosul.

Earlier on Sunday, Samir Shaker Mahmud al-Sumaydi, a member of the Governing Council, said the executive body had recommended the corpses be given to the family for burial.

Mr Sumaydi, a Sunni member of the council, said if no one claimed the bodies other steps would be taken.

He said he expected the coalition would follow the Iraqi body’s recommendation.

A tribal elder from Saddam Hussein’s clan said in Awja on Sunday he had tried to claim the bodies of Saddam’s slain sons Uday and Qusay but that a US official told him the ousted president should come instead.

Mahmoud an-Nada said he had spoken to a US official and told him he wanted a proper Islamic burial for the sons, killed last Tuesday in a ferocious American onslaught on the Mosul villa where they were holed up.

“He told me Saddam Hussein can come and get them,” said Nada, head of the Beijat tribal group that encompasses Saddam’s clan. “This is political talk.”

“We are all relatives and we can do this on his behalf...The Americans know the current situation with Saddam Hussein, so this talk is undesirable.”

Nada said he had been told on Sunday he could make a request through the International Committee of the Red Cross to retrieve the bodies, which he wants to bury in a tribal cemetery.

REVENGE ON WAY: Angry residents of Mosul on Sunday warned Nawaf al-Zaidan, the tribal chief who owned the mansion where Uday and Qusay died in a fierce battle, that revenge is on the way.

“He’s a traitor to his country and religion,” said a shopkeeper across from Zaidan’s gutted home, destroyed in the long but one-sided battle between Saddam Hussein’s sons and US forces last Tuesday.

And whether they loved Saddam’s regime or not, many here view Zaidan, the suspected informant who tipped off the Americans, as a traitor for the sake of a 30-million-dollar pricetag on Uday and Qusay’s heads.

“Nawaf and his son and the money he received will all end up in a grave,” predicted Zaidan’s old neighbourhood shopkeeper.

The Americans will not say if Zaidan is the man who turned in Saddam’s sons, but neither will they deny it.—Agencies